


Hereafter

by Luna



Category: The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/pseuds/Luna
Summary: Theo makes her way home.





	Hereafter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunabee34 (Lorraine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/gifts).



Theo drives back to the city alone. It probably isn't wise, since she hasn't slept properly in--how long? only a few days, that's right, though it seems--and her hands are rather shaky on the steering wheel. The smart thing, the prudent thing to do would have been to go down into the town of Hillsdale and find a room for at least one more night. But she wants to get away fast and clean, put as many miles as possible between herself and Hill House.

She keeps glancing up at the rear-view mirror, checking for headlights. Not because she thinks she might have been followed. Because it's reassuring to know that there are other drivers on the road. Strangers who would lean on the horn if she started driving erratically, drifting or swerving into oncoming traffic. Theo can see now how easy it would be. One sharp turn, a few seconds of pain, and then you're just gone.

* 

"The experiment was over," Dr. Montague kept saying, in a childish voice. "We had agreed, the experiment was over."

And he looked at Theo as if he expected her to comfort him, as the closest female to hand. His wife was otherwise occupied. She had shed a few large tears, saying, "oh, the poor child," and now she was studying the oak tree through opera glasses and consulting breathlessly with Arthur and, of course, Planchette. The old spirits hadn't manifested to her satisfaction, but now there was a fresh one to fuss over. The poor child.

 _Nell_ , Theo thought, _if you can move that thing, tell her to go to hell._ She tossed her head back and regarded Montague down the length of her nose. "You brought her here," she said. "Both of us. You picked us out, sent us letters, and set us up to be haunted."

Montague sniffed. "You answered the letters," he said. "I did tell you, in fact, that aspects of the house would be intensified by--I told you to leave if you felt it taking hold..."

He trailed off, his gaze pulled away over Theo's shoulder. She found she couldn't help craning her neck to look. Hill House with the afternoon sun behind it, rendering it a black silhouette with a red-tinged halo, the windows on its face dark and unreflecting, a kind of eyeless sight.

Or: a collection of orderly bricks and cunningly mitered corners. Carved wood, wrought iron. A house built by human hands, with ordinary human malice in its frame, that was all. That was more than enough.

Theo didn't know which Hill House she was looking at, but she could feel its shadow oozing across the lawn to lap at her feet. She turned back to Montague. "We were supposed to be studying the house," she said. "God knows it's terrifying enough, and it's got plenty of dead women to sell your book for you. But no, you wanted to observe what it would do to _us_."

Montague stared at the house another moment and twitched as if he was waking up. He scratched at his beard. "Unfortunately, Eleanor Vance did this to herself," he said. "I underestimated her. Her latent capacity for--"

"The experiment's over," Theo said, and walked away to keep herself from strangling him right in front of the police.

The police--who had taken all morning to come up from town, a horrible interval during which there was no choice but to stay close together, huddled miserably on the veranda--had taken Eleanor away, first her body and then the wreckage of her car. It all seemed so small. Two officers stayed behind, and they were talking to Luke. Questioning him, the lord of the manor. Theo watched him try not to squirm, with his know-nothing smile and his checkbook rather ostentatiously in hand.

She wanted to push past the cops and ask her own questions. _Was it you, knocking on the walls? Throwing paint, or blood, on my clothes? Did a ghost make you do it, or did you and the good doctor sit up over brandy and think up pranks to play on a couple of foolish girls?_

Luke wouldn't be able to give her an intelligent answer. He glanced up in her direction and she turned immediately and walked on. Funny, they'd only known each other a week, and all their conversation was for show, trying to one-up each other's jokes, flirting out of sheer habit. She didn't know him, or even want to know him, and yet some part of her felt sick to think that she'd never see him again.

It was Eleanor who'd drawn her in and made her feel like those few days were a lifetime, like they'd been missing each other before they even met. Long lost cousins, they'd pretended. But Eleanor wasn't pretending. She believed her flights of fancy, her lies, as she told them. She had seen the stone lions on her mantelpiece; she had said that she loved Theo, belonged with her. And if Montague was right, her believing that made it real.

 _Nellie_ , Theo thought, _I would have taken you away with me, if I'd known it was the only way to get you out of here._

And then she thought, _Liar, you couldn't wait to be free of her, you all but shoved her out the door--_

She was still wearing Eleanor's red sweater.

Theo made it to the shade of the trees before she doubled over and threw up. She wiped at her eyes furiously with the back of her hand, banishing the tears as fast as they could fall. Her own clothes were still in the Green Room, her suitcase, her useless notes. They'd have to stay there and rot with the place. She was out of the sightline of Hill House now, beyond the reach of its thick black shadow. To turn back, to open the door and climb the stairs, give it another chance to close around her like the teeth of a trap--that would be insanity. She'd be the next suicide, another madwoman hanging herself from the turret. 

Or maybe nothing would happen to Theo at all. The house wanted Eleanor; it got her. It might sleep peacefully, for a time, at least. And it would wake up hungry--

 _Mrs. Dudley sets breakfast out at nine,_ Theo thought, and heard herself laugh, high and thin and unnatural. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop the sound, and ran for her car with the taste of blood in her mouth.

*

It's two in the morning when Theo gets off the highway. It must have rained earlier, down here, because the streets are slick and gleaming, streaked with color from the neon signs and traffic lights. The gutters are shining. Summer is Theo's least favorite season in the city, the humid weather, the way everything smells when left out in the sun. She'd forgotten, or never noticed: it's beautiful.

She parks on the street in front of her building, opens the car door and leans out so that she can look up at her apartment. The windows are alight, awake. For a moment it seems like Theo's been away so long that strangers must have moved in and taken over. Maybe she should just sleep in the backseat, curl up like a cat and go on driving when the sun comes up.

She hears Eleanor saying, in her strangely happy little voice, _everything in all the world that belongs to me is in a carton in the back of my car._ And she yanks her keys from the ignition, dashes inside and takes the stairs two at a time.

The door opens before Theo reaches it, light spilling out and making her squint. Sarah is dressed in checked pants and a black shirt, a dishtowel in her hand. There must have been a party, earlier, and Sarah can never go to bed without cleaning up. It's one of the fights they're always having.

"Theo," Sarah says, "my God, you could have called. I didn't think you'd be back for weeks."

"Are you alone?" Theo asks.

"Of _course_ I am, and I don't like the sound of that question--"

Theo goes around her, into the brightness of their living room. She blinks at the antique coffee table, the crystal ashtray, a guitar leaning against the wall waiting for new strings. Old things done over, given the chance to be useful again, to belong to new hands.

Sarah comes over and takes Theo by the arms. "Look at me," she says. When Theo does, Sarah's forehead furrows deeply. "Baby. Where did you go? What happened?"

There must be circles dark as bruises under Theo's eyes, her hair blown wild from the wind on the highway. Her face is hot; her hands are cold. She takes a big step backward. "Nothing really happened to me," she says. "I haven't slept, that's all, and I need to get out of _this_ \--"

She pulls Eleanor's sweater off over her head and flings it to the ground. Sarah looks down, and Theo can feel her wanting to pick it up, fold it neatly. Make it right.

"A bath first," Sarah says, instead. "A bath and a stiff drink, and then sleep. You can tell me all about it tomorrow."

"Journeys end in lovers meeting," Theo says, and swallows a sob.

"What's that? That's a quote from somewhere."

"From someone." Theo tries in vain to clear her throat. If she starts blubbering now, she might not be able to stop. They'll put her in a lunatic asylum. Or a circus. The Amazing Crying Woman, see how she never runs dry. "What would you say," she asks Sarah, "if I told you I'd met a ghost?"

Sarah smooths the hair back from Theo's forehead, rests her hand there as if to check for a fever. "I'd ask you what it was like."

 _She was just like me,_ Theo thinks. It's true, no matter how different they seemed by daylight. With their lives stripped away, in the dark, holding on to each other and trying not to scream, she and Eleanor were the same. The only real difference between them--the thin, smoky line between living and dead--was that Theo had been loved, before. Hill House couldn't keep her. She had a home in the world.

 _Be happy_ \--it was one of the last things she said to Eleanor. And maybe she finally was, for those last few seconds. Stepping on the gas, turning the wheel. Turning home.

Theo shudders and leans into Sarah's embrace, smells the sweet wine on her breath. "I met a ghost," she says, "and she was my friend, and tomorrow I'm sure I won't believe it. I'll tell you the rational explanation, instead, and you can be as angry with me as you like, and I'll deserve it. I'm a monster--but come to bed with me, now. I don't want to sleep alone."

Sarah picks up Theo's hand and laces their fingers together. "All right," she says. "Everything else can wait until morning."

Whatever fearful energy was keeping Theo awake, keeping her eyes on the road, it leaves her now. She lets herself be led to the bedroom. _Home,_ she thinks. _Nellie, please be happy_ \--and she holds Sarah's hand tighter. "Thank you," she says. She's falling asleep on her feet, but it's important to say it. A deep breath, a long sigh. "Thank you. Let's keep the lights on."


End file.
